4. Court

4

COURT

Q uinn did fuck me again at dawn, and I enjoyed every moment of it. I’m off about my own duties today, though, as he finally gets to take a rest now that the Meeting of the Havens is over. I dress in a white Fae-silk shirt and embroidered waist cincher this morning, plus apple-green riding pants up in his bedroom loft. Today’s attire is Fae rather than Vampire couture because I need to take care of my other engagement.

Helping my Summer Fae Prince Lucca Bellari talk up his father, the King, to his populace—while secretly building Lucca’s own agenda for a revolution amongst the Summer Fae.

As I dress quickly now, late for my rendezvous with Lucca, Quinn lounges in bed, incredible with the sunlight streaming in and lighting up his pale alabaster skin. His black silk sheets are pushed down to his hips. He shows me everything but not quite, his dark gaze hot as he watches me put a final few pins in my wild red hair so it’s out of my face.

“Have fun with Lucca.” Quinn’s voice drips with innuendo as he gives me the most salacious look ever.

“You just wish you were coming with us.” I lift an eyebrow at him, flirting as I pull on russet leather riding boots tooled with a Fae design Lucca sent for our outing today.

“I do and I don’t,” Quinn says, with a smaller smile now as he laces his hands behind his head, looking fetching as he glows against the black silk pillows. “I’m grateful to have a respite today, and let Devi and Curio manage the Hotel now that the Meeting is over. Even Master Vampires have to rest sometimes.”

“Lazy,” I say. Quinn grins at me as I tease him, but then I sober. “When are we going to have our meeting with Master Ilyov?”

“Soon.” Quinn’s gaze darkens as I see his mind move a thousand miles a minute now. “I’ll contact him today and arrange something. Tomorrow, or later, though. Today is yours and Lucca’s. Enjoy.”

“I will.” I finish with my boots and smile.

Before I can push to standing from the edge of the bed, however, Quinn makes an impossibly fast surge like a cat. He’s got me netted in his arms on the bed, and I love it as he presses me close to his iron-hard body, kissing me. It goes on for a long while, until I’m thoroughly wet and flustered, knowing I have to get going but conflicted about doing so.

Quinn pulls back, his smile diabolical. “Have fun,” he says, his breath at my lips.

Then pushes me up to standing, as he flops back down to the pillows with a laugh.

“You shit.” I shake my head at him, but I’m grinning also as I blow him a kiss. Quinn catches it and presses it to his heart—and I feel his heart give a pleased beat beneath his hand, as if I’ve actually kissed it.

I do have to leave sometime, however; with a wave, I’m off down the wrought-iron stairs, leaving his bedroom behind as I navigate through the Hotel to the place I can get a manticore carriage to the Summer Fae Palace.

As I trot down the steps of the outdoor courtyard where the carriages wait for guests, though, I see Lucca’s man, Alleno Massi, is already there waiting for me with two saddled and bridled Summer Fae riding antelopes .

Dressed in his usual charcoal grey Fae assassin’s gear, knives and a rapier bristling about his person, Alleno is up quickly from his casual slouch against the wall. His clear emerald eyes sear with irritation as he scrubs a hand through his short chestnut hair. His full lips frown as I arrive, making the white scar that tears over his chin more pronounced than usual.

Like most Fae, however, Alleno is still handsome.

In a terribly subtle way I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to.

“Ariana! Finally.” Alleno huffs as he hands me Miritain’s reins, the white antelope that I ride on outings with Lucca. “Does punctuality not exist in your world?”

“Do cell phones not exist in yours? You could have texted me to tell me you were waiting.” I wave my phone at him, then put it back in a pocket of my riding pants. “Besides. I’m only twenty minutes late. Where’s Lucca?”

“Already out at our destination. He got an early start at dawn, supervising the wagons,” Alleno says as he mounts up on his dark grey antelope, knowing I’m a good rider and need no help as I mount up beside him.

“Wagons?” I ask, reining Miritain around so we can set out through the porticos, then following Alleno’s lead as he takes a route west from the Hotel along Florence’s cobbled streets. The morning is bright, the August heat sultry already as I see Fae lounging beneath shop-awnings, rather than out in the direct sun.

That’s saying something for Summer Fae, who love the heat. The day promises to be a scorcher; I’m already sweating as we ride, and Alleno hands me an ornate blue glass bottle from a set of embroidered silk saddlebags behind him.

“Here, water. We’re going to be outside a while in the country; this bottle is enchanted to refill as much as you need.”

“Cool.” I open the lid and take a sip, watching it instantly refill before I stash it away in a saddlebag behind me. “So, wagons? Where are we headed? I thought we were visiting the southern quarter of the city today to talk Lucca up with his people.”

“An emergency arose,” Alleno says. He eyeballs me now and clicks his tongue, urging his beast into a fast walk rather than dawdle. “A blight has hit our western gardens and orchards just outside the city. The farmers there have been suffering this past week as the Summer Fae Scholars investigate what’s causing the blight. Lucca’s out there helping today.”

“Let me guess: his father has done nothing.” I lift an eyebrow at Alleno as we pass into the western hills of the city, where tall trees shade the cobbled street and the manors are more spaced out with ornate gardens and walls surrounding the villas.

“King Archivolio Bellari doesn’t care how much his lower classes suffer,” Alleno snorts as we take a road that stretches wide and flat, heading out of the city into the countryside. “But these farms feed half the city. If they fail, an enormous chunk of our populace is going to go hungry.”

“How bad is it?” I ask, frowning.

“You’ll see.” Alleno falls into silence now as we ride.

As the countryside rolls by, manor homes on the outskirts of the city transition to farms. At first, I wonder if there’s anything wrong with those farms, as vast fields of lavender and mustard, mint and edible greens stretch all around us, perfectly hale under the bright Tuscan sun. We pass silver-leaved olive groves and pear orchards, then nectarines, until I see small, electric-blue mushrooms sprouting up here and there.

They grow in little clusters by the roadside; not just in the soil, but sprouting out of trees, climbing up through trailing vines, and just about everywhere. I see how the plants and soil infected by those mushrooms run with shimmering lines of electric blue mycelium. Before long, everything around me shimmers blue in the hot summer day.

And everything that was once bright and green has turned white and scorched.

“Wow. What is it?” I gaze around now, seeing how the farmer’ s fields on every side run rampant with shimmering blue, white, and sickly plants. The orchards fare little better, though the trees seem to be holding out, only the fruit on them infected.

“It’s magical, not organic, we know that much,” Alleno says, as we turn down a secondary road, riding past a village waymarker that says Villa Bello . “It took the fields first, then the orchards; as you can see, both harvests are already lost. Our farmers can re-grow them with magic, but if there’s too much delay, we’ll be past the growing season. Summer Fae magic can’t make much blossom in the winter, even with our tremendous abilities.”

“If you lose these crops, the city suffers all year,” I say as I understand. “Can your people trade for what they need?”

“Because of the King’s strict trade edicts, no.” Alleno’s green eyes are dark now. “He forbids trade with many of the surrounding Lineages that might help us, most of them Forbidden since the War of Rome.”

Just then, we arrive at a town square that seems to have a tremendous aid relief operation going on. Massive wagons pulled by manticores are unloading food and vegetable produce, packaged goods, and more, as teams of Fae scientists in white-gold cleanroom suits survey a nearby pear orchard and dying lavender field.

Gossamer tents of the Summer Fae’s colorful butterfly-wing awnings have been set up. The square is busy; Fae from the entire surrounding area receive aid as some also get medical attention, and have samples of blighted crops they’ve brought in evaluated.

Just then, I see my Fae Prince Lucca Bellari hop down from the back of one of the massive wagons, where he’s helping unload crates of food. He sees Alleno and I arrive and hails us brightly.

Lucca is resplendent in the summer sun as diamond-light rainbows of his Royal Summer Fae magic whirl around him. He scrubs a hand through his short ash-blond hair as I watch, rucking it up into a glorious, sweaty mess.

With a drop-dead sexy smile, he vaults down off the wagon and trots to us, his long legs clad in ornately tooled russet riding boots over his grey breeches. Dressed in a men’s Fae-silk shirt and a dark grey embroidered waistcoat, a filigreed torque of platinum around his neck is his only significant adornment. His high cheekbones are glorious as his full lips smile.

His summer-blue eyes are the only adornment he needs as they twinkle mischievously in the hot day.

“Ariana! At last. Is there no punctuality in the Dark Haven of Florence?” Lucca is teasing as Alleno and I dismount.

“Har. Har. Alleno just fussed about the same thing. You two must be related.” Alleno is Lucca’s cousin on his mother’s side, and though Alleno is the darker and more brooding of the pair, they share certain features.

Like the stunning clarity of their bright, intense eyes.

“You look beautiful.” Lucca raises my hand to his lips as he pins me with his gaze, gone two shades darker as he simmers with a different heat in the high summer day. “You’ve arrived just in time; the aid wagons just got here. Help us unload?”

“Of course,” I say. I smile, loving how dedicated Lucca is to his people.

Over the next few hours, Lucca puts Alleno and me to work. We help him unload all the wagons, going back for load after load of foodstuffs and Fae medicine as the small town square becomes flooded with people. Apparently, word has gotten out about Lucca’s efforts to help his kin; I gossip with the populace as we help, and discover the King has turned a blind eye to the entire blight situation, and how it’s affected his people.

Lucca is acting on his own, and I hear how he’s arranged help from all over Italy to come in to these farmers and their families, until a magical cure for the blight can be found. Some of the Fae farmers think it’s a curse, levied at them to punish their King for his isolationist ways and heavy-handed approach to ruling.

Lucca doesn’t refute that rumor, but neither does he support it as he and I work together, doling out supplies, food, and listening to his people’s woes. All day, we help; and all day, Lucca listens with an attentive ear, sometimes making Alleno take down a few notes on a cell phone he actually does have.

Lucca listens with attentive patience to every farmer who speaks to him. As he grasps hands and kisses cheeks, he’s calm and wise as he urges them to have patience and give help to the scientists he’s arranged to come figure this out.

In the aid tents, I see towering Rock Giants moving about, carrying crates. One of the Forbidden Lineages to the Summer Fae, it’s clear nobody gives two shits about the King’s edict, but are only glad they came to help as Fae chitchat with them and share what they have.

As a team of scientists enter the tent, disrobing from their cleanroom suits, I see they’re Dark Elves with their long, jet-black hair and ornate Elvish tattooing over their cheekbones. Another of the Forbidden Lineages, similar to Fae in appearance but distinctly different in magic, Lucca steps over to have quiet words with them as they explain to him the blight’s prognosis.

Lucca nodding and having Alleno take copious notes.

At last, we conclude our part in the aid effort for the day. As the wagons are emptied and the lines dispersed with promises of more deliveries in a different hamlet tomorrow, the Fae and Elvish scientists packing up their gear, Lucca asks Alleno to finish supervising everything.

A pleased fatigue is in Lucca’s bright grace as he steps close, putting his arms around me. He’s familiar even though several Fae farmers, scientists, and aid workers are watching.

He lifts his lips and gives me a brief kiss, right there with everyone staring. My cheeks heat in a furious blush, unsure if he should do that out in public where any of it could get back to his father via the Fae rumor-mill.

But then I remember Lucca and I are supposed to be sham-courting to make his father believe we’re doing all this to support his reign, all while Lucca and I talk up his own agenda of modernization, equality, and progress in the Summer Fae world .

Something we did a lot today, as people spoke badly of their King and his edicts.

“Shall we get out of here? Get some time to ourselves now that our work is done?” Lucca asks as he nuzzles my nose, and I fall into him.

“Sounds nice,” I say, and smile as I risk winding my arms up around his shoulders. He doesn’t flinch, only smiles bigger like a cad as he pulls me to him now, pressing hips to hips.

“Good. Because I have a place in mind to take you.”

Lucca’s smile is mischievous as he nods to a Fae groom lingering nearby. The man nods back, and we follow him out of the aid tent to a paddock where my white antelope is, and Lucca’s big grey stag Soot. We mount up, and as the groom dissolves a magical boundary on the paddock, we take our leave.

We don’t ride back towards the town square, however, instead setting out over the blight-devoured fields into the forest nearby. As we ride, I notice we aren’t headed east back towards Florence, but north towards I don’t know what.

As we leave the blight area, the regular forest, orchards, and fields of Tuscany return. Fae are not possessive about land; there are no fences here, only the occasional cairn to mark a growing boundary or a transition to protected forest land.

Though the summer streams, fields, and forest are glorious, the August afternoon is sweltering as we ride through a glade now, surrounded by a horseshoe waterfall and cork oaks. I’m damp with sweat beneath my light silk clothing, despite copious swigs from my enchanted water bottle. As I fan out my long waves of wild red hair, I touch a gold torque at my neck, a gift from Lucca this past week.

He beams as he notes it, pleasure shining in his summer-blue eyes. As I ride my antelope over a carpet of silky yellow flowers, Lucca grins at me from his tall grey stag.

He reins in as a flash of his rainbow auric wings shimmer from his back like sunlight.

“We’re here.”

“Here, where?” I ask, even as delight fills me to realize this waterfall-surrounded glade is our destination. I inhale the smell of hot summer grass and ozone from the falls. Every scent is super-saturated, every color vivid. Jewel-toned dragonflies flit by in colors not found in the human world, the place I was raised.

The air here in the waterfall glade is cooler than the rest of the countryside; I inhale with pleasure as I dismount, feeling energy invigorate me as I revel in the burbling roar of the thirty-foot falls all around. Lucca turns our beasts free, unbridling them so they can graze and wander. But not before taking the embroidered silk saddlebags from their backs.

He whips out an enormous blue silk blanket, settling it in the tall grass.

“A picnic?” I smile, loving Lucca’s impromptu outings in nature.

“To start.” He lifts a sexy eyebrow as he grins like a ruffian.

Then opens a hand, inviting me to the blanket to dine.